Month: January 2014

This year’s Super Bowl,
scheduled to be played this Sunday, will be held in New Jersey,
even though a lot of news outlets covering the sporting event, and
even the NFL, may prefer to call what’s officially a “NY/NJ” Super
Bowl a New York affair. The football teams that play at the East
Rutherford, New Jersey stadium, the Giants and the Jets, are after
all New York (or NY/NJ) teams. Sunday’s televised coverage is sure
to include plenty of bump shots of New York City locations and few
actually from the area where the stadium is located, which is
basically a swamp. Even the NYPD has gotten in on the “let’s
pretend this thing is happening in New York” action; promising

unprecedented security at the event and
deploying 200 “temporary” security cameras in midtown New
York.

But one way to ascertain that, yes, in fact the Super Bowl is
being held in New Jersey, is to look at whose taxman the Colorado
and Washington players competing in the Super Bowl will pay. That
would be dirty Jersey, and according to K. Sean Packard, a CPA
writing at Forbes.com, Jersey will indeed treat the players dirty

when it comes to taxes:

If Manning is able to play next season, his New Jersey
income tax would be $46,989 on $92,000 for winning the Super Bowl,
or 51.08%. If they lose and he is able to play in 2014, he will pay
New Jersey $46,844 on his $46,000, which amounts to a 101.83% tax
on his actual Super Bowl earnings in the state—and this does not
even consider federal taxes!

Manning’s tax liability would be less, Packard explained, if the
38-year-old Denver Broncos quarterback were to retire after the
Super Bowl, because New Jersey looks at the total income, even when
not playing in the state, and because the Broncos play the Jets
next season, so New Jersey’s state government gets a take of that
too. The taxes paid by Manning and the other Broncos and Seahwawks
players for merely competing in New Jersey in a league event, will
also fall quite short of how much tax money New Jersey has
wasted holding the Super Bowl.

Bilking athletes, though, is nothing new. Jamaican track star
Usain Bolt, for example, is
boycotting sporting events in the United Kingdom until their
tax laws are loosened, while golf star Phil Mickelson was bullied
by wealth redistribution  advocates for complaining about his
onerous tax rate, eventually
apologizing for quite rightly pointing out that onerous federal
and state (for Mickelson, California) tax laws would cause him to
consider drastic changes in his life. Mickelson pays
61 percent of his winnings in taxes, and uncomfortable fact tax
boosters tried to deny.

Yesterday,
I mentioned the number of times that Obama referred to Egypt in
his 2012 and 2013 State of the Union addresses, noting that since
the 2013 speech there has been a coup in Egypt, a crackdown on the
Muslim Brotherhood, and a referendum on a draft constitution, which
the Muslim Brotherhood called for its members to boycott.

I was expecting that given the current situation in Egypt (the
most populous Arab country and home of the Suez Canal) and
America’s history of aid to the Egyptian military that it might
warrant at least a brief mention.

However, Egypt was not specifically mentioned once in
last night’s speech, although Obama did say, “From Tunisia to
Burma, we’re supporting those who are willing to do the hard work
of building democracy.”

Obama might not want to have mentioned Egypt because his
administration’s policy towards Egypt has been far from ideal.

In the wake of the military overthrowing Egypt’s first
democratically-elected president the Obama administration did not
withdraw foreign aid as it is supposed to in response to a
coup.

U.S. military aid to Egypt was also not suspended after security
forces carried out a
brutal crackdown on supporters of ousted President Morsi.

It was months after the the overthrow of Morsi and the bloody
crackdown on Morsi’s supporters that some aid
was suspended.

Obama spoke out in support of “those who are willing to do the
hard work of building democracy” last night, but failed to mention
that Egypt’s draft constitution was passed by just over 98
percent of those who voted in a referendum which the Muslim
Brotherhood urged its members to boycott. Since the referendum on
the new constitution, which bans political parties like the Muslim
Brotherhood, the Egyptian military has backed Gen. Abdul Fattah
al-Sisi to run for president. Gen. al-Sisi was the head of the
Egyptian military at the time of Morsi’s overthrow last July.

Yesterday,
I mentioned the number of times that Obama referred to Egypt in
his 2012 and 2013 State of the Union addresses, noting that since
the 2013 speech there has been a coup in Egypt, a crackdown on the
Muslim Brotherhood, and a referendum on a draft constitution, which
the Muslim Brotherhood called for its members to boycott.

I was expecting that given the current situation in Egypt (the
most populous Arab country and home of the Suez Canal) and
America’s history of aid to the Egyptian military that it might
warrant at least a brief mention.

However, Egypt was not specifically mentioned once in
last night’s speech, although Obama did say, “From Tunisia to
Burma, we’re supporting those who are willing to do the hard work
of building democracy.”

Obama might not want to have mentioned Egypt because his
administration’s policy towards Egypt has been far from ideal.

In the wake of the military overthrowing Egypt’s first
democratically-elected president the Obama administration did not
withdraw foreign aid as it is supposed to in response to a
coup.

U.S. military aid to Egypt was also not suspended after security
forces carried out a
brutal crackdown on supporters of ousted President Morsi.

It was months after the the overthrow of Morsi and the bloody
crackdown on Morsi’s supporters that some aid
was suspended.

Obama spoke out in support of “those who are willing to do the
hard work of building democracy” last night, but failed to mention
that Egypt’s draft constitution was passed by just over 98
percent of those who voted in a referendum which the Muslim
Brotherhood urged its members to boycott. Since the referendum on
the new constitution, which bans political parties like the Muslim
Brotherhood, the Egyptian military has backed Gen. Abdul Fattah
al-Sisi to run for president. Gen. al-Sisi was the head of the
Egyptian military at the time of Morsi’s overthrow last July.

President Barack Obama’s State of the Union
address Tuesday wasn’t what John Stossel wanted to hear. This is
what he thinks the president should have said,
on topics ranging from NSA surveillance and Obamacare to drug
legalization and climate change.

View this article.

“Is Hawaii’s Anti-GMO Movement Really Just Anti-Science?” is the
latest from Reason TV. Watch above or click the link below for full
text, links, downloadable versions and more.

View this article.